


Nowhere Else

by Dr_TJ_Eckleburg



Category: Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg/pseuds/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dan is wounded in Peru (and fixed by the good Doctor West), our heroes discuss what the future holds for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Else

**Author's Note:**

> This is little more than an attempt to get a feel for writing these two, but I still thought I'd share. I am still outrageously new to this fandom so if I messed up any timeline details, I apologize!

Despite the feverish haze that blurred and distorted the world around Dan, there was Herbert, some beacon in the darkness, hunched over books and countless sheets of notes like a studious vulture. Even in his current state, the aptitude of such a comparison was not lost on Dr. Cain. Dr. West was rather good at waiting around for people to drop dead.

Consciousness crept in like a fog, and pain caused Dan to flinch. The last things he could remember were explosions, lights, a man with a gun and shock, numbness. The ceiling above him was cracked. The bed was stiff. The hot and sticky scent of the jungle lingered. _“Let’s go home…”_ Had Herbert said that? At any rate, this was not the good ol’ US of A.

“Welcome back, Dr. Cain.” Hesitantly, Herbert pulled his gaze from his notes and smiled. Dan wasn’t certain if that was supposed to be reassuring or welcoming, but it came off with all the smugness and self-satisfaction he was accustomed to seeing in his partner.

“Herbert.”

“Hmm.”

Dan winced again at the hot pain in his abdomen. He stole a glance downward to see bandages wrapped neatly and carefully around him. “Where are we?” he croaked.

“A dot on the map one hundred miles from Lima. This clinic is certainly ramshackle at best,” Herbert sighed as he came to take a seat at Dan’s bedside, “but it does show marked improvements over the hut out of which we were operating before.”

Sudden panic caused Dan to swallow thickly. “W-What have you done?”

“You were stabbed,” he answered. “Tissue damage was limited, but infection was imminent. I brought you here so that we might have access to slightly better facilities.” Herbert smiled and condescended, “You were broken, Daniel, and I fixed you.”

“Is that all?” He couldn’t keep his voice as strong as he might’ve liked as Herbert gingerly lifted back the bed sheet and admired his handiwork. “Is that all you did to me?”

Herbert’s face set and grew grim. “Yes, that’s all. You didn’t die. It was a reasonably simple procedure. Had you perished--”

“You would’ve tried, right? I would’ve been the next monster to come flying off the table at you.”

“Monster is a strong word, Dan.”

“ _Tell me._ You’d bring me back, wouldn’t you?”

His gaze darted to some far and empty corner of the room. “Good assistants are very hard to come by.”

Dan laughed bitterly, almost deliriously, though it hurt to do it. He glanced briefly to a sad bedside table for drugs of any kind. Alas. “You’re nothing if not predictable, Dr. West.”

“Well… your help and your... presence mean a great deal to me.” 

And that, Dan determined, was the closest Herbert could get to exhibiting human emotion. That was, in his own language, some translation of the phrase _‘I like you.’_ Even as the maddening nights in the jungle had driven them into each other’s arms for some release from it all, Herbert had either remained silent or maintained so work-driven a discussion that Dan sometimes forgot he was having sex with the partner Fate had so _graciously_ given him. 

There was some vague semblance of warmth in Herbert’s eyes now, and in his weakened state, Dan momentarily relaxed. “Well. Thank you.”

Herbert nodded curtly. “We’ll be leaving soon, once you’re strong enough.”

“Leaving for where?”

“Home.”

“ _Arkham?_ ”

“Why not? Would the _pillar of society_ that is Miskatonic Hospital turn away two of the university’s finest sons?” Herbert questioned sardonically. He was a serial killer, Dan thought, so vain that he couldn’t help himself from returning to the scene of the crime. “Anyway, Dan, we survived the massacre and civil war. They might, in some melon-headed way, see us as heroes.”

And for the thousandth time in the last year, Dan was reminded that he had thrown himself in with a madman. He felt very tired in a way that extended beyond his current physical state. “Herbert, I can’t stop you but… I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“Oh, you can and you will,” he answered simply. “I certainly can’t go forward without you.”

“This is different. Out here it was all… like a dream.”

“A dream?” Herbert spat. “Here we’re far away from the bureaucracy and the politics of American medicine. Here there are no pretenses, no locked doors. We were free here, Dan. Free to conduct our research as we chose. It is pure reality. Our work has flourished here!”

“In the middle of a war, Herbert!” Dan said, and once again regretted being unable to put any power behind his voice. “Our real purpose was to save people!”

“And we will.” 

“If this is so pure a reality, why are we going back to Arkham?”

Herbert removed his glasses and rubbed briefly at the bridge of his nose before replacing them. “Unfortunately there are certain commodities we do not have here.”

He sighed and tried valiantly to ignore the mounting pain in his belly. “Any town but Arkham,” Dan said firmly. “I can’t go back there. Not after Meg.”

“Dan,” Herbert groaned, stretching the vowel and leaning forward anxiously. “Trust me. I know the circumstances surrounding Meg’s death were… less than favorable.”

_Was this sympathy?_ Dan narrowed his gaze. “You could say that.”

“But I need you to trust me.” His tone was level but pleading. In all their time together, Dan had until now only heard Herbert speak in such a way while beseeching him to help satisfy his addiction. His eyes flitted briefly to vague pockmarks on Herbert’s forearm. Dr. West remembered himself and sat up straighter. He did not plead now. “I have reasons for going back to Arkham. I have a plan, one that I think will please you.”

“Please me?”

“Yes. I have a theory of sorts.”

“And you can’t tell me now.”

“No.”

“Of course,” Dan said and winced again. Herbert calmly rose from his chair and retrieved, much to Dan’s relief, morphine. At least… he hoped that was morphine.

“But it must be Arkham… and it must be you.” He returned to Dan’s bedside and asked, “Do you trust me?”

“Trust you?”

“Yes. I did, after all, save your life. _Do you trust me?_ ”

As he gripped Dan’s arm firmly and mercifully drugged him with a precision Herbert could not always attain while doping himself, Dr. Cain’s mind drifted to one of several nights when they were wrapped up in each other, humid and sticky, and Herbert spoke with such conviction of what they could do, what they could be if they continued to work together as scientists. He talked in a wildly kinetic nature, refusing to acknowledge what they had just done in that small military-issue cot, what they had been doing for months. He didn’t speak of their trysts, and so neither did Dan. He didn’t know if Herbert was ashamed or if he very simply didn’t know how to address with words the steps their relationship had taken.

All the same, Dan wondered if such behavior would follow them back to Massachusetts. It was such a perfect distraction. Sex was never gentle, never romantic with Herbert. It had become an extension of their work, a way to release inevitable tension. It was a far cry from anything he’d ever done with Meg, but it was all Dan could ask for.

As scary as it was, he did trust Herbert. He was forced to; he was all Dan had. If they parted ways, what would Daniel Cain have left of who he was? Nothing. And despite the horrors he had witnessed, nothing was so frightening as completely obliterating the life he’d led. Herbert was inextricably linked to all that Dan once had, all that he would never have again and all that--for better or for worse--his life would become.

Life with Herbert West was hell… and yet he couldn’t imagine living without him now.

“Yes, Herbert. I trust you.”

He fully expected the smug smile that stretched Herbert’s lips. The look in his eye was both a warm, friendly embrace and a suffocating choke hold. His mad companion leaned forward and placed a firm hand on Dan’s shoulder. “Then come with me, and I will show you. I will make you stay.”

There was nowhere else to go.


End file.
